Spiritual journey: Chicago church moved, rebuilt in Lake County

St. John of God Church was shipped from Chicago's South Side to farmland in Lake County

The $18 packs of paczkis sold during Mardi Gras over the last half decade didn't quite cover all the costs, but every little bit helped when St. Raphael the Archangel parishioners sought the funds necessary to build their "Old New Church" on Route 45.

Truckload by truckload, stone by stone, stained-glass panel by stained-glass panel, what was once St. John of God Church was shipped up the Tri-State Tollway from 52nd and Throop streets in Chicago to farmland in Old Milll Creek, where workers began building a home for a parish established in 2007 out of a converted barn.

The resulting St. Raphael Church is still a work in progress, with such key elements as 140-foot bell towers and a 40,000-pound organ yet to be installed. But with refinished oak pews and a marble altar already set in place, church officials opened the doors for worship last summer — even if some of that worship has to take place while construction actively continues.

"Just yesterday, we had a big plastic tarp up in here, so most masses are held in the choir loft because of the noise," said parish business and construction manager Richard Gambla on Tuesday, Feb. 17. "The altar, what we call the reredos, was finished just last week. It is a continuous process."

The direct roots of the process began in 2010, when the nascent parish started raising construction funds that currently have amounted to more than $10 million — a far cry from the estimated $25 million it would take to build using new materials.

Gambla recalled that the first mention of hauling an old church to a new site actually arose in an offhand way when Cardinal Francis George dedicated the original St. Raphael facility in 2007.

"It's kind of a funny story, because we were having the dedication for our little church, and Cardinal George was there," Gambla said. "We went in for some snacks after the service, and our pastor said, 'Well, Your Eminence, now we have to figure out how to get a new church, a real church.'

"And (Cardinal George) jokingly said, 'Well, I'll give you St. John of God if you want it,' and we all laughed. Moving an old, monstrous church like that didn't make much sense, because you have to restructure it all."

But Gambla added that when feedback was sought from parishioners, "They all said the same thing — 'We want a church that looks like a church.'"

The Renaissance-styled St. John of God certainly fills that bill, with limestone facade and 15-foot archways that were all destined for a landfill after the parish shut its doors in 1992. Bringing it back to life has involved everything from running adequate electricity to the 22-acre site to installing upgrades that bring it up to modern-day code, from handicapped accessibility to protection against earthquakes.

While acoustic materials in the arched, 70-foot ceiling are among the new features that were brought in, St. Raphael's is otherwise what was constructed in Chicago's Back of the Yards neighborhood in 1918.

"We saved absolutely everything we could. Even the windows — the storm windows, the sashes, the trim — all that's from St. John of God," Gambla said.

The exterior walls and stained-glass windows — only three of which have already been installed while funding continues to come in — were recycled from St. Peter Canisius on Chicago's West Side, Gambla added.

That makes St. Raphael the result of not one but two church buildings that were shuttered and would have been demolished for scrap.

With between $10 million and $11 million already invested — dollars from capital campaigns that included an up-front loan from the Chicago Archdiocese and donations from the parish's 750-plus families — the remaining tasks include raising $1.5 million to complete the towers and another $500,000 to $600,000 for colonnades. Contributions are also being sought to install each of more than a dozen remaining stained-glass windows.

While a dedication ceremony — or, perhaps more accurately, a re-dedication ceremony — awaits completion of a project that is in the 85-90 percent range, Gambla said the ongoing journey has already delivered rewards.

"The main reason for doing this was to build this beautiful church, but it was also to be kind of a prototype to solve a problem that most dioceses have, and that's, 'What do you do with the old churches?'" he said. "They're knocking them down and throwing them in a pile. So we wanted to show that you could do this and end up with something beautiful."